I wonder how fast it would render a gaussian on a large Photoshop file, download a 250-meg file, print a long Word document, and play a song in iTunes, simultaneously. And without crashing.

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ericmurphy wrote:
I wonder how fast it would render a gaussian on a large Photoshop file, download a 250-meg file, print a long Word document, and play a song in iTunes, simultaneously. And without crashing.

and displayed Finder windows of folders with hundreds of files...

The Finder has always been faster under OS9. Not sure why this is still the case and its disheartening to hear that its still faster than OSX versions and Mac hardware that is two generations ahead of what I am using now.
What gives?

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FlipFriddle wrote:
The Finder has always been faster under OS9. Not sure why this is still the case and its disheartening to hear that its still faster than OSX versions and Mac hardware that is two generations ahead of what I am using now.
What gives?

You are being kind. Depending on how you count "generations" of processor you are possibly looking at current macs being 4 generations ahead and still slower (G3 to G4=1, G4 to G5=2, G5 to Core architecture=3, and Core to Core 2=4). Still,m I wouldn't go back to OS9 for anything. I'll take a slight performance hit in Finder to have a secure, stable, and yes "pretty" OS.

It makes sense...Mac and PC operating systems just become larger and more complex every year. Remember, install discs used to install from CDs just a few years ago, and now they're on DVDs. MAC OS8 from 1997? The OS ran on maybe 60MB of RAM, and the GUI took much less video ram.

Even with faster hardware, it's still got to do the work. Of course, to Eric Murphy's point, it won't come close the the performance of a newer machine doing super large files, only OS-level stuff.

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ericmurphy wrote:
I wonder how fast it would render a gaussian on a large Photoshop file, download a 250-meg file, print a long Word document, and play a song in iTunes, simultaneously. And without crashing.

Of course today's computers can do advanced stuff faster, but why can't they also do the simple stuff faster as well? I've been wondering about that ever since I got my MacPro... which to me, seems slower in the Finder than my G5 was. Is the OS X starting to become bloated in it's teenage years? I know with each release there is a claim of "Faster" & "Better", but it can't always be true.

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What gives?

Well, a fully composited (in real time!) GUI for one thing. Robust multi-tasking for another. Useful and good-looking overlays (Exposй, application switcher, notifications, volume and eject, etc,) for a third.

You want more? Mousedowns and pulling down menus don't cause system halts anymore. Live, informative Dock icons. Integrated, system-level screensavers. Robust DVD playback. The Dashboard.

Mac OS X's GUI does a he!! of a lot more and does it a he!! of a lot more capably and smoothly than Mac OS 9's ever did.

That's what gives.

And if you could boot into OS 9 on a MacBook?

Watch that Finder burn! Wham! Bam! Thankyou... damn!

. . . and say it again. OS 9 was MUCH faster when you moved your mouse in the os than OS X. Mind you I wouldnt give up my SECURE OS X for OS 9 (even though TECHNICALLY that was SECURE TOO oh well. . .) But Now and again I have had to troubleshoot my old G4 500 mhz and it SCREAMS in OS 9. . . so I know what he's talking about. . .

Is it because the new OS runs off the Video card and not the processor like in the old days?

Load up Linux and lots of RAM on a beige G3, put a lightweight window manager on it like AfterStep or WindowMaker, and it will not embarrass itself even with a fully-capable browser like Konqueror. For bonus points, fire up MacOS 9 in a Mac-on-Linux window and bop back & forth between the two environments at will.

Older computers like that are still quite capable of surfing, email, chat, blogging... most of that Internet stuff we usually think is only possible with the latest & greatest.

Gee, if I was shelved in the deep cold for years I, too, would try to show off to once again just to be loved!

<grYn>

I guess this guy has never used a Power Mac G4 (the fastest machines capable of booting OS 9).

OS X's slow UI kept me away for years. To this day, it's still many times slower than OS 9 (which in turn was noticeably slower than System 7).

Part of this is for good reason. OS X does a lot of fancy stuff that really does improve the user experience. For example, it would be impossible to have Exposй with OS 9's simple-but-fast windowing system, and have you ever tried one of those extensions for OS 9 that enabled live window dragging? It's slow as hell and doesn't even look right, because the underlying graphics system just doesn't support that kind of thing. And I, for one, appreciate having advanced text smoothing all across the system. Double-buffered windows certainly take their toll on performance, but as a developer, I sure am glad I don't have to do all that work myself with every program I write, and as a user I'm glad I don't need to use a million apps written by developers who decided it wasn't worth the work anyway. I could go on.

But a lot of it is for lame reasons: Translucent menus; dynamic shadows; gratuitously large, dynamically-scaled file icons. Useless glitz (okay, the icons are debatably useful). Again, I could go on. And worst of all, the OS X Finder has never been properly optimized (or even properly debugged). The Finder in OS X is dog slow, and always has been. Opening a folder with thousands of files can take minutes, whereas OS 9 would deal with it like it was nothing. And don't get me started on file sharing...

The truth is, OS X — most specifically the Finder — is a LOT less efficient than OS 9 was. But that's nothing unique. Most modern programs — on any platform — are not optimized the way they used to be, because developers use the extra power they have to make their jobs easier. 20 years ago, you might write a simple little program in assembly. Today that's just unheard-of. That's not necessarily a bad thing; I mean, would you rather developers spent all their time optimizing the little things? Is the difference between a few nanoseconds and a few milliseconds really that important?

Keep your worthless 8600 with OS9 that can't run any modern applications or comunicate with the rest of society. For what?
Because it can open a finder window .000000001 second faster?
What a joke. Like one of the previous posters said, try and open up a photoshop file, or copy 100 gigs of data and multitask several applications. Oh that's right you can't do that in OS9.
I am not impressed and people should start living in the present and not the past. OS9 is the past and it's dead, done, and over with. OSX is doing multiple things in the finder so yes it maybe .000000001 second slower. But it won't crash on you and make you restart your whole system and you won't lose your document you forgot to save either.

and, you have a mac that will do all that? without crashing? oh, maybe so, you didn't include opening half a dozen tabs in safari...

I've an old Mac Plus and the windows just fly open, but, do i want to use my old Mac Plus day to day?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAiiiiiiiiii OS 9 head for the hills! The walking dead are ALIVE!

What a POS OS that was. He can have it. The rest of us will do REAL WORK on OS X thank you. Who gives a flying fsck about the snappy Finder in such a lame LAME L A M E OS. Ugh.

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horvatic wrote:
Like one of the previous posters said, try and open up a photoshop file, or copy 100 gigs of data and multitask several applications. Oh that's right you can't do that in OS9.

Umm...OS 9 can do all of those things very well.

I'm amazed at the defensiveness this article has brought about. The article didn't even begin to imply that an 8600 running OS 9 is more useful than a new Mac. Time marches on, and at this point OS X is probably the best choice for everyone here. Nobody's said otherwise. But that doesn't mean it's perfect. A lot of the choices Apple's made and the priorities they've set have been bad. (Again I have to mention translucent menus. Really, who asked for that?) Why pretend otherwise?

I believe System 7 was a much better OS for its time than any version of OS X. Same for OS 8. But that doesn't mean I want to replace my current Mac with my old Performa! Again, time marches on.

To summarize: OS X rules, but it has its share of problems.

The speed of the GUI is just a bias or prejudice (or perhaps a flavor or a style) with no real impact on the speed at which you get work done. And, to my way of thinking, it's just a bit too geeky to think that speed in this one, very narrow aspect of the computing experience actually matters, when the relation to the user (the "u" in GUI) is what's really being negotiated. So, I actually like the slightly damped down pace of X; it feels more human, more noticeable to the eye, while super-fast snappy windows feel harsh. Save the crazy speed for the guts of the machine but leave the face of it somewhat softer and more serene. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple purposely retards GUI action in order to achieve this pleasant experience.

I've always pegged the difference down to Passive multitasking kicking the backside of OSX's Preemptive multitasking when doing one (simple) OS level job at a time.

It's just a shame that the advances in CPU and GPU design since the era of the PowerMac 8600 can't quite seem to keep up with OSX demands when performing simple tasks, such as manually resizing iTunes main window.

And I guess that's the point of Mr Farr's blog, from what I can see anyway.

Don't forget that MacBooks share video memory with main memory. and remember that Os9's Finder was a lot touchier & more crash-able than the Finder in 10.4

Although there are some definite lag problems with the OS X Finder (in particular, it's infuriatingly slow opening up a folder for the first time, because you have to wait for it to render before it does anything at all), you should really compare its performance with large folders, and with 80+ gigabyte hard drives with many thousands of files.

In my own experience, the 10.4 Finder works much better with hundreds of items than the 9.x Finder. Moreover, column view is much more efficent for navigating deep folder hierarchies. Moreover, OS X launches programs faster than OS 9 ever did, due to its aggressive caching and virtual memory optimization. It also has dramatically faster web browsing, thanks to Safari and Quartz's vast improvements in text and graphics rendering. Even QuickDraw text rendering is faster in 10.4 than it was in 9.x, and Quartz beats it hands-down.

However, the "wait until the menu/folder/whatever is rendered before doing anything after you click" behavior is absolutely infuriating and contributes greatly to the perceived "slowness" of the system, even when the overall time to open a folder may be less. (The "fade-out" effect of OS X menus also increases the feeling of sluggishness.)

There's nothing I enjoy more than watching people fall all over themselves arguing against a point I never made...

Ah, well. Listen up, dudes: I'm typing this on a maxed-out July, 2006 MacBook, and would I trade this for my 8600? No way, no how. I'm not arguing OS 9 vs. OS X, though some of you are. What I'm saying is that I unpacked this thing after a couple of years in storage (!), plugged it in, and was freaking BLOWN AWAY by how fast it felt in general operation as compared to any OS X machine I've ever used. We're talking subjective impressions here, obviously. But this was also my first professional model desktop Mac. It has everything. You could start a whole new civilization with just this one particular machine. Not only that, but it's absolutely beautiful as a work of electromechanical art. The case is made of **metal**, it has RCA jacks for audio, it's quiet, it has tons of software that never got ported to OS X (sob), and it's gonna really hurt to give it away.

OS X is God's own operating system, but even the Almighty can get sad remembering what life was like with perfect hearing and a 32-inch waist. Buy enough of my ebooks when they come out at MyMac.com next month, and I'll get a Mac Pro and a 30-inch display. Something tells me I wouldn't be so nostalgic then...

Cheers,
John

Well, OK. The case is NOT made of metal. Maybe it felt like metal 'cause it was so damned cold. But it is made of very hard plastic. [ahem] No kidding, I really thought it was metal. Damn!

(Crap, there go my ebook sales.)

John-who-can't-tell-polymers-from-steel

John, you seem to have missed the point of what most people were saying - what they were saying is that although certain tasks may appear to be faster on the 8600, that's irrelevant if the system is much slower overall.

The only meaningful measurement of performance is how long it takes for you to perform *your own work* on the machine - but people do *more things* in *less time* under 10.4 than they did under 9.x, making OS X the system that is much faster (not to mention more capable) in actual use.

Although I agree that the classic Mac Finder is a thing of beauty (cf. John Siracusa of Ars Technica), the OS X Finder is much faster overall for launching programs (due to caching), opening large folders completely (9.x gives you a spinning cursor and bogs down horribly), copying files locally and over the network, and doing anything at all while background tasks are running. Not to mention that column view is superior for navigating huge file hierarchies. Overall, the OS X Finder - warts and all - is faster and much more productive.

Nonetheless, it is still clear that Apple needs to polish it the way they did the 9.x Finder - then it would be another classic for the ages!

Or, you could just use Mac Pilot and turn of all the stupid visual effects Mac OS X adds... watch Mac OS 9 UI speed return in a flash.

I think the important thing here is simple: It's amazing how useful Macs are after almost a decade (the 8600 was released in early '97).

Of course I can do more on my current machine than I could on, say, my old 9600. For example, I never watched videos on that old machine, let alone made them. But for the things I did used to do, it still performs very well (and in some cases better than my newer machines). The main exception is web browsing. The web has changed too much, and it's very demanding. But back before the web was infected with countless fancy technologies that nobody really needs...hoo-boy. That was fast. I still miss the responsive scrolling I used to get in OS 9.

By the way, has anyone ever used ShadowKiller? On my G4 Mini, it makes menus about as responsive as they were on my old G3 iMac in OS 9. That is to say, lightning-quick. The difference is really nice. Too bad OS X looks like such a mess without those shadows, since they're the only border windows and menus have. If only there were a way to replace them with 9-style outlines instead of just removing them entirely. Having my windows bleed right into each other is just not acceptable, so I keep the shadows and deal with the poorer performance. Pity Apple doesn't have some options. It'd be so easy to make OS X more responsive if they just cared to try.

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the OS X Finder is much faster overall for launching programs (due to caching), opening large folders completely (9.x gives you a spinning cursor and bogs down horribly), copying files locally and over the network

Hmm. That's the exact opposite of my experience. Go figure. Well, except for program launching, but that's not really the Finder as much as the underlying system.

OSX takes care of the situation beautifully.
All real OSX apps will take this into account, and will know immediately where the file they are using is.
This real time tracking of the state of open files is one of the thing in which OSX excels and blows away OS9, but it does take processing power.

more than any other program in OS X, on my G3 800 iBook. I am constantly having to relaunch it. The Finder definitely needs a rewrite, or a decent replacement.

OS9 can do those things very well, in your dreams maybe.
That's like comparing a Yugo to a ferrari. I'll stick with the modern ferrari you stick with your Yugo that has no more updated software available for just about everything. OSX can do more and process more than OS9 could ever dream of.

You know, I think color movies are a million times better than black and white movies, and I'll never go back to watching black and white movies ever again.

Wait. I'm in the wrong topic.

Don't forget the most important thing about OSX visuals, selling newer, faster machines. If you could make it look like OS 7, it could run on a performa. And the coders who would have to write in nubus, ADB & floppy support would send me death threats.

I'm stuck in OS 9 for web dev as I invested in several suites and applications before OSX and now can't afford to do the same again. I'm still stuck using a G3 for OSX, too, so I can only imagine how everything would seem to scream if I could actually upgrade.

I must note, however, that while I use OSX 99% of the time, it is still a boon to be able to boot into OS 9 (Classic mode sucks moose) and use all of the old apps I know and love.

Funny thing is, they are still as powerful and capable as they were when I bought them. Sure, the new versions have all sorts of nifty features and workflows that make some tasks (that I rarely do) easier, but I'm just as productive now five and six years later in the older versions as I was when I bought them. So yeah, I'll do the video editing and hardcore image stuff in OSX, but I can still build functional and efficient dynamic sites quickly and easily in OS 9 without dropping several grand in hardware and software upgrades.

Of course, once everything goes Intel native and the OS and applications both make the most of the platform it may be time to suck it up and invest in a new Mac. In the meantime, my 6 year old iBook is still productive running outdated apps while my wife's 2 year old PC is already a doorstop with generations newer software. If that doesn't spell out the advantages of investing in a Mac, I don't know what does.

At home I have one Mac with OS 9 (and a couple of Windows machines with XP). The Mac is a G4 400 with a CPU upgrade (1 GZ) and an upgraded GPU (ATI 9000).

OS 9 works most of the time. But a problem with OS 9 which no one has mentioned is that it has limits in what kind of web browser you can use. I'm stuck with older versions of Mozilla and Netscape which sometime can't render pages properly. I even have to use Explorer 5.1 every once in a while! But even with all of my browser switching, some websites (with video) will not work with OS 9.

P.S. I stick with OS 9 because I like to play older games (Diablo 2) which work better in OS 9 than OS X. I've thought about partitioning the HD and trying to have a dual boot setup but it's too much of a hassle right now.

Have a good one, BB

The point that old Macs hold their value and utility is definitely true.

The biggest deficiency of old Macs (and Mac OS 9) is web browsing - the web has moved on, while OS 9 browsers are mostly stuck in the past (not to mention their various bugs and security flaws.) However, Opera and iCab might be decent alternatives to IE 5 or the unofficial Mozilla 1.4rc3 build.

Old versions of many programs - Word, Excel, Photoshop, PageMaker, Illustrator, Eudora, etc. - may not have as many bells and whistles as newer versions, but they do tend to have the core functionality that you use 99% of the time.

There are also many good games that run on 9.x - for example, old Blizzard games like StarCraft, WarCraft II and Diablo II work great. Hmm, not to mention classics like Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, etc..

Then again, I can run OS X on my 1998 PowerBook G3, using XPostFacto, if I really have to....

All in all, there's a lot to be said for old Macs - which is why people keep them around.

Heh, and check out lowendmac.com for other helpful information....

Note that DoTT, Sam and Max, Full Throttle, etc. were (excellent) LucasArts games, before they gave up on the Mac... ;-(

And you can run them in OS X using ScummVM, of course...

Reading this blog: what a hoot!

My son and I were in an internet cafe when I challenged him to race our browsers. I had a Wallstreet w/ 300 Mhz, 384 Mb, and IE 5. He had a G4 iBook w/ 1 GHz, 1 Gb, and Firefox. He was sure he would win but I thought I might keep up in OS 9. To both our surprise my Wallstreet could bring up every website twice as fast as his iBook. We were both on the same wireless network.

We just ran the same test with my Wallstreet and his brand new MacBook Intel Duo-Core @ 2GHz, which is just as fast as my Dual 2 GHz G5 running ArchiCAD 10 (In OSX) and photorendering in same. The intel processors are without doubt smoking fast...

I thought the MacBook would destroy my old Wallstreet, but again to both our shock, I could beat him in about 3 out of five wireless browser tests, I was running OS 9!

(And I was single-tasking with IE5's memory partition set way, way up there, colors set at thousands)

Again, what a hoot!

Actually on the iBook, I tried racing three different browsers: Opera 9, FireFox with Fasterfox extension enabled, and Safarri, all running in OS X. They all lost

On the second race with the MacBook, my dad's old wallstreet was sharing the internet connection from the MacBook. It could have slowed either one of us down, so possibly not a fair test.

"You are being kind. Depending on how you count "generations" of processor you are possibly looking at current macs being 4 generations ahead and still slower (G3 to G4=1, G4 to G5=2, G5 to Core architecture=3, and Core to Core 2=4). Still,m I wouldn't go back to OS9 for anything. I'll take a slight performance hit in Finder to have a secure, stable, and yes "pretty" OS."

601 = G1
603/604 = G2
G3, G4 , G5,

G6 = x86 Core series (not really G6 b/c G* naming convention typically refers to PPC line)